Friday, October 09, 2009

House of Wax, the 1953 version and not the horrible version with Paris Hilton, is a wonderful horror film. This film is wonderful. The star, Vincent Price, as always, is eloquent and masterful.

A mysterious sculptor (Vincent Price), a man who has been missing for quite a few years after an accident, resurfaces with a new exhibit, a wax statue museum. During the grand exhibition the morgue begins to mysteriously lose its bodies from the morgue. The sculptor's assistant begins to become suspicious of the sculptor and starts to piece together suspicion that the bodies are ending up at the wax museum. To make matters worse, the sculptor starts to believe that the assistant's girlfriend would make a great Marie Antoinette.

This film is similar to the 2005 version of the story in only two ways: The name (House of Wax), and the fact there actually is wax used in the film. The real similarities end there. There is nothing outside of that, nothing, zip, nada that is the same. Everything was changed in the remake. But not to be too harsh on remakes, this film is *shock* a remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), a film I have yet to see. A fun additional fact: House of Wax was the first 3d film with a stereophonic soundtrack.